


Lullabye

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Black Cards
Genre: F/M, Sleepwalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2011-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-21 07:51:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the sleepy/unconscious square at kink_bingo.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Lullabye

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the sleepy/unconscious square at kink_bingo.

The first time Bebe wakes up in Pete's bunk, she's pretty sure she should just fling herself out of the moving vehicle and be done with it.

"Um." She sits up slowly, holding the blanket against her chest, then realizes that she's still fully dressed. "Oh."

Pete's sitting up already, leaning back against the side of the bunk, eyes fixed on a magazine balanced across his knees. "Don't worry about it."

"I sort of have a sleepwalking problem."

The sound Pete makes is really different from his normal laugh. She really does need to just jump into traffic. "Yeah, I caught on to that."

"I'm sorry." She sounds like a little girl, and she feels like one, sitting there clutching at the blanket. She makes herself let go and smooth it out. "I'll just go back to my own bed and we'll pretend this never happened."

He shoots her a thumbs-up, eyes never leaving the page. She lies awake in her own bunk for hours, punching her stuffed cat and cursing into her pillow and vaguely, traitorously thinking that of anybody he ought to give her a little sympathy.

**

The next time it happens, they're in a hotel, which is just _ridiculous_. She manages to get out of her room, walk all the way down the hall, and hang out in the vending machine alcove for God knows how long before Pete finds her.

She wakes up tucked into his bed again, with him sitting in the armchair nearby, watching the Weather Channel with the sound off.

"Fucking fuck." She sits up and rubs at her eyes, groaning in frustration. "I'm sorry."

"It's cool." He doesn't look at her, just watches a storm system track across Kansas in neon-purple silence. "Next time you should take some quarters with you. And your room key."

"Quarters?"

"You were down at the vending machines. Not sure what you were looking for, so I bought you one of everything."

She stares at the rows of chips and candy laid out neatly on the floor beside the bed. "That was really unnecessary."

"It's the kind of thing I do at three in the morning."

She swings her legs over the edge of the bed. "I'm going to go get some more sleep."

"Do it here. You don't have your key." His eyes flick to her for just an instant before going back to the screen. "It's cool. Don't, like. Don't worry."

She lies back down and pulls the blanket up to her chin, staring at the ceiling and then closing her eyes. "I wasn't."

**

A couple of shows later he calls her Sleeping Beauty right out on stage, in front of God and the audience and everybody. He's smiling when he says it, jokey and teasing, being Stage Pete and charming and going for a laugh. She pulls away from him and crosses to the other end of the stage, keeping Nate close and turning all of her attention to the audience for the rest of the set.

He catches her in the dressing room afterward, fixing her makeup and taming her hair. "I toured with Patrick for a long time," he says, leaning in the doorframe. "I can tell when I'm getting the cold shoulder."

She smacks her hairbrush down to the table and rolls her shoulders, wincing at the pain in the left one. She needs to be less clumsy. "Is this where you tell me he's better at being bitchy than I am?"

"Absolutely not."

She turns and glares. "Did you just call me bitchy?"

"Wow, I walked into that with no possible way to win." He laughs and looks down at the floor, running his hand over his hair. "So was it something I said or something I did? Or both?"

"Don't make fun of me."

"I didn't."

"Sleeping Beauty?"

It takes a minute for him to get it, and she can see it when he does, confusion watering down into wide-eyed surprise. He raps his knuckles on the doorframe and shakes his head. "That was a compliment, B. Try to keep up."

**

Just a day or two after that she wakes up in his bunk again. He's reading a magazine, just like last time, but this time her head is resting on his thigh, nose tucked right in close to the folds of the front pocket, and he's resting his hand on her hair.

"Oh my God." She scrambles backward, her arm flailing out and knocking his water bottle away to the floor. She can hear it roll back under the bunk, probably good and out of reach. "Oh, Jesus."

He drops the magazine and holds up both hands, not reaching for her. "Hey. Hey. I'm sorry. I tried to just tuck you in, but you kept...wanting to cuddle. It seemed like I should probably just let you."

"Jesus Christ."

"I'm sorry. I should've realized it was inappropriate. I swear, I didn't..."

"Shut _up_." She buries her face in her hands, resisting the wild impulse to dig her nails in until she screams. "Just shut up, Pete."

"I'm..."

It takes a minute before she can manage to speak, and she's already on her way out of the bunk when she does. "It's not _inappropriate_ , it's _embarrassing_ , what do you think I am, a little kid?"

She hears him call her name a few times, the last one almost yelling, but she doesn't turn around. And once she's back in her own bed, she certainly doesn't sleep.

**

She's tried all of these things before, but sheer humiliation drives her to give another go to not sleeping at all, putting herself to bed with alcohol, and popping the Xanax she's supposed to only use for nerves and airplanes. The results are predictable: having a shrieking meltdown at Spencer, throwing up in the middle of the night, and waking up out on the sidewalk two blocks away from their hotel, Pete standing beside her without a trace of a smile.

"Knock it off," he says before she can get her thoughts in order at all. "It's not fucking funny, B."

"I wasn't trying to be funny."

"What were you trying to do?"

She waves her hands, encompassing the street, the sky, herself. "Not this!"

"Well, I think you made it worse." The lines under his eyes are dark, sharp, like they were drawn on in pencil. "I couldn't even steer you back upstairs."

"I'm sorry."

"Just...just don't mess with it, okay? Leave your sleep alone. Let it be."

She turns away from him and kicks at the sidewalk. She's barefoot. She's lucky she didn't step on something gross out here. "Not so much Sleeping Beauty now, huh?"

"Fishing for compliments now?" He's trying to play it off, to make a joke. She should let him.

Instead she shakes her head, turns, and starts walking. "Sleeping Beauty at least got a kiss out of it. All I've got is wet feet."

**

She can't actually avoid him, but she can avoid the conversation. Nate and Spencer and Marcus are all excellent accomplices, who have no idea that that's what they're doing when she jumps into their personal space and spins a new conversation off rather than let Pete come at her with his serious eyes and get her alone.

He slips around her guard, of course. He's good at that. He has her conditioned to open any e-mail that's titled "lyrics???" as soon as it shows up on her phone, any hour of day or night.

 _kisses are tricky they can be a Thing or not a Thing you know_

She can think of any number of responses to that, but in the end she's a nice girl with good manners who doesn't need to piss off her boss. _Like I said, I'm not a little kid._

He doesn't answer, so she sends a text, too. _Don't be a douche._

There's still no response, but she likes to pretend she's figured out the difference between his sulky silences and his thinking silences by now.

**

He doesn't bring it up again. Neither does she. It comes and goes the way it does and she sleeps through the night for the rest of the tour, until their last night on the bus.

She wakes up in his bunk, his phone blinking 4:30 AM from where it's plugged in in the corner. She's sleep-foggy and far too warm and she doesn't want to move, because she's so comfortable.

He's lying down this time, stretched out beside her, his eyes half-closed and his headphones in. Her head's resting on his shoulder, close enough that she can hear the overspill of sound. Not music. One of his podcasts, maybe.

He must feel her move, or breathe, or maybe the air's just different when she's awake instead of asleep. He looks sideways at her and smiles, tugging his headphones away. "Hey."

"Hey." She fumbles at the blanket, slow and clumsy, intending to push it away so she can sit up. His hand covers hers, heavy and warm, until she looks at him again.

It's a gentle kiss, mostly chaste. Definitely not a Thing, but it's warm and sure and it's kind.

"Go back to sleep, beauty," he says, just above a whisper. "It's not morning yet."  



End file.
